Function Reference

Program Execution Functions

Introduction

Those functions provide means to execute commands on the system itself, and means to secure such commands.

Requirements

No external libraries are needed to build this extension.

Installation

There is no installation needed to use these functions; they are part of the PHP core.

Runtime Configuration

This extension has no configuration directives defined in php.ini.

Resource Types

This extension defines a process resource, returned by proc_open().

Predefined Constants

This extension has no constants defined.

Notes

Warning

Open files with lock (especially open sessions) should be closed before executing a program in the background.

See Also

These functions are also closely related to the backtick operator. Also, while in safe mode you must consider the safe_mode_exec_dir directive.

Table of Contents

escapeshellarg — Escape a string to be used as a shell argument
escapeshellcmd — Escape shell metacharacters
exec — Execute an external program
passthru — Execute an external program and display raw output
proc_close — Close a process opened by proc_open and return the exit code of that process.
proc_get_status — Get information about a process opened by proc_open
proc_nice — Change the priority of the current process
proc_open — Execute a command and open file pointers for input/output
proc_terminate — Kills a process opened by proc_open
shell_exec — Execute command via shell and return the complete output as a string
system — Execute an external program and display the output

Function Reference